A CHECK TO Debauchery AND OTHER CRYING SINS Of these TIMES WITH Several useful Rules for the attaining the contrary Virtues To which are annexed some Directions and Heads for Meditation and Prayer taken out of Holy Scripture Except the Lord had left unto us a very small Remnant we should have been as Sodom and we should have been like unto Gomorrah Is 1.9 Oct. 26. 92. Imprimatur Edm. Bohun LONDON Printed for Richard Butt in Princes-street near Covent-Garden and are to be sould by Randal Taylor near Stacioners-Hall 1692. A LETTER TO A FRIEND SIR I make you this small Present as knowing a Gentleman ought to be as zealous for Virtue as he is for Honour and to shew his Courage chiefly in conquering himself Your Example influences very far being so well known and so well beloved And I need not tell you how many out of meer Emulation are apt enough to become your Creatures and Followers The Conversation of some Gentlemen is not so innocent as becomes their Quality and as it ought to be But it is commonly either Drollery or hard drinking In the former they neither spare Friend nor Foe have no regard to Modesty or good Manners and many times not to sacred Things themselves And in the latter they are obnoxious to all other even the greatest Sins It is Solomon's Observation concerning Drunkenness that it leads to Whoredom and all Lewd things and renders Men more insensible than Beasts and yet so great is the sottishness of its followers they will seek it still and not refrain Prov. 23.33 c. Those false Maxims so much in Vogue with some God will deal with me as a Gentleman a Souldier a Courtier and the like so often urged in Excuse of a Vicious Life were invented by the Common Enemy of Mankind to justle out the Laws of God and to render all good Instructions of Pious Men ineffectual Whereas the H. Scripture assures us That God is no respecter of Persons but in every Nation he that feareth God and worketh Righteousness i. e. becomes and does the duty of a Christian is accepted of him and none others Acts 10.34 35. John 3.18 And if we profess to know God and deny him in our Works we are no better than Infidels and if we say we do know him and not keep his Commandments we are Lyars let our Quality or Station be what it will Tit. 1.16 Many Saints now in Heaven were indeed not always so upon Earth but then resolutely reforming themselves and retracting their past Course of Life the Divine Grace and assistance being never wanting to such they afterwards by incessant vertue became great Instruments of God's Glory in the Salvation of innumerable Souls This is more or less applicable to every Man whilst he lives in this World who hath always some fault or other if not ill habit to retract which by God's assistance he may do when he pleases and it is his greatest wisdom not to delay his Endeavours as the contrary his greatest folly I hope therefore you will not think me your Enemy because I tell you the truth Who am on the contrary Sir Your Faithful Friend in this highest point of Friendship and most ready to serve you in any thing conducing to your eternal happiness at least my poor Prayers shall not be wanting SIR Your most Sincere Humble Servant L. D. THE EPISTLE TO THE READER Courteous Reader THese Collections were designed chiefly for the good of my self and some particular Freinds but may perhaps be of service towards the awakening and exciting others to endeavour the pulling down those abominable sins which walk our Streets at Noon day with a Whores forehead unmasked and inhabit with us in our very Gates even in the most Eminent and most frequented places of our Cities without any notice taken of them unless it be to Caress and Encourage them The wiser Heathen would have thought such gross sins a reproach to Reason and a Disgrace to Humane Nature and therefore for Christians to spend their whole lives here in them and expect Heaven at the last which is the reward only of Vertue and Holiness would be the greatest folly and madness in the World The way to Salvation is now by Grace not by weak Nature by what is revealed to â—â— to be the will of God not what we can think or can know any other way by Faith the evidence of things not seen by the Light of Nature yet most certain to us not by sight or blind Reason by denying not pleasing our selves Paradise is not to be gained the same way it was lost but the contrary Not by eating but by forbearing to eat the forbidden Fruit. Not that ceasing to do evil is sufficient to make us happy unless we also learn to do well we must besides bridling our Appetites perform such dayly duty to God as he requires of us Go on from Grace to Grace from Vertue to Vertue from one degree of Holiness to another till we come to the measure of the Stature of the fulness of Christ The first and principal step however to Vertue is the ceasing to be Vicious and this cannot be done without renouncing all sensuality and subduing our Lusts In order to which we are to pray for the assistance of God's Grace to consult good Men and good Books and resolve to follow their Example and Directions And if this short Treatise should conduce any thing towards the reclaiming of but one single Sinner from a lewd sensual debauched Course of Life to become a sober chast sincere Christian it would be thought more then a sufficient recompence to Courteous Reader Your Faithful Freind for the Good of your Soul L. D. The Contents CHAP. I. OF Gross Carnal Sins in General Pag. 1 Marriage a lawful Remedy Pag. 3 And so also our Lord's Counsel of a Single Life Ibid. The practice of the present Age too contrary to both ibid. CHAP. II. Of the impurity and filthiness of such sins Pag. 6 They proceed wholly from our selves Pag. 7 Natural Infirmities no sins Pag. 6 Opposite to God's own Holiness ibid. A particular mark set upon them in Scripture Pag. 8 Opposite to the cleanness and sanctity which ought to be in the Body as well as in the Soul of every Christian Pag. 9 Diseases Sores c. are not the uncleanness her meant ibid The Body the Temple of the Holy Ghost a Member of Christ his Spouse purchased with his precious Blood therefore to be kept holy Pag. 10 11. Fornication c. Dishonourable and Disgraceful to the committors thereof Offers the greatest indignity to Christ's Incarnation Pag. 12 Filthy Discourse tending thereunto to be avoided ibid. A Natural shame accompanies such sins Pag. 14 The Habit thereof changes Men into Beasts Pag. 15 These were the sins the Heathen sell into when abandoned by God for their Idolatry Pag. 15 16 CHAP. III. Of the punishments of such sins Pag. 17 God a revenges of such sins himself Pag.
Virgins that they more especially care for the things of the Lord how to please him in every thing and so become Holy both in Body and in Spirit yet are Married People also as the Circumstances of their Stations will permit obliged to care for the things of the Lord above all other things for the Spouse of Christ the Church being a chast Virgin as St. Paul calls her we that profess ourselves Members of that spotless Church 2 Cor. 11.2 whether we be married or unmarried ought also to be chast and neither in action or thought make the Members of Christ the members of an Harlot The same Apostle in his first Epistle to the Corinthians Argues still more against Fornication 1 Cor. 6.18 Fly Fornication saith he and why so For every other Sin that a Man doth is without the Body i. e. doth not so immediately touch the body with any proper Infamy or so entirely remove it from under the power of our Lord But he that committeth Fornication and much more if Adultery c. sinneth against his own body i. e. dishonours it the most he can by degrading himself to so base an Alliance as to become one and the same with that vile nasty Creature with whom he sinneth and so from a pure Member of Christ he renders himself the filthy Member of an Infamous Harlot or something worse I here add that this sin offers also the greatest Indignity to the Incarnation of the Son of God imaginable who did therefore take upon him our Flesh to exalt it into his own nature his Heavenly Image that no such filthiness might any longer inhabit in it To prevent which vileness in us the same Apostle also peculiarly concerning this sin or any filthy Discourse tending towards it gives charge that it should not be so much as named amongst such as would pass for Christians But Fornication saith he to the Ephesians and all Vncleanness Eph. 5.3 4. c. let it not be so much as once named amongst you as becometh Saints Nor Filthiness nor Foolish Talking nor Jesting which are not Convenient And the Apostle there assures us that no Whoremonger or unclean Person hath any Inheritance in the Kingdom of Christ and of God Besides the Seal of the Covenant of Grace with Abraham was it not ordered by God to be so particularly placed upon all the Faithful as to become in a manner a punishment of their Lusts And is there not a Natural shame upon every man in the committing of those sins or any thing like them tho' lawful So as that the light of the Sun the sight of a pious Picture the coming in of a little Child or almost any of God's Creatures even a pious thought which proceeds also from God is sufficient sometimes to overawe prevent and put by the most hardned Sinner from embracing the Temptation And is it not a burning shame that the presence of Almighty God and His. Holy Angels who with perfect hatred of all Impurities are continually looking upon us and disswading us to the contrary should not be much more prevalent with us against such enormous wickedness But yet so strong are the habits of such Sins as in a manner to dispoil us of all shamefacedness and wholly to alter and corrupt the Nature and Reason of those Persons in which they are insomuch that the Practisers but of one Species of them are called in the Revelations by the name of Dogs Rev. 22.15 Phil. 3.2 and so are the Gnosticks by St. Paul for their being guilty of some such like impurities As if the Custom and Beastliness of such sins did utterly depose men from their manhood and change them into Dogs And lastly not to omit the greatest Argument of all of the Deformity and Filthiness of the sins of the Flesh Rom. 1.16 we find in the Epistle to the Romans when God had abandoned those Heathens that had first forsaken him to follow their own Imaginations since they would not hearken to his Commands which were Holy Just and Good they committed such monstrous unnatural Lusts that were the greatest disgrace to Humane Nature that possibly could be Men with Men and so Women also committing those things that were unseemly and unbefitting rational Creatures God grant that we be not so left to our selves so given over to our own hearts Lusts a certain sign of God's highest displeasure and a fore-runner of his heaviest Judgments CHAP. III. Of the punishments of such Sins TO those dissolute unthinking Wretches who will not by the preceeding Arguments be prevailed on to leave their lewd unmanly Course of Life I shall propose in the second place the Terrors of the Lord to perswade them the severe Punishments which inevitably attend such sins that the Practisers thereof may most rightly measure the greatness of their faults which they make Natural and for that reason excusable by the great revenge God himself takes of them Thus St. Paul warns his Thessalonians to abstain from the Fornication of the Gentiles 1 Thess 4.6 7. the defrauding our Brother of his Wife c And what is the reason because the Lord saith he is the avenger of all such all manner of Lusts even those commited only in the heart And so in his Epistle to the Hebrews he pronounceth the same thing Heb. 13.4 Marriage is Honourable and the bed undefiled but Whoremongers and Adulterers God will Judge And in detestation of such unlawful Lusts the Lord appointed under Moses's Law That a Bastard should not enter into the Congregation of the Lord Deut. 23.2 until the tenth Generation And does not the Prophet Jeremiah most particularly threaten in God's Name such Sinners for their Assembling in Troops into Harlots Houses and running like fed Horses after their Neighbours Wives Shall I not Visit for these things saith the Lord Jer. 5.7 and shall not my Soul be avenged of such a Nation as this Those Expressions The Lord is the Avenger God will Judge the Lord appointed shall I not visit plainly show that God taketh the punishing all such abominations into his own hands that they may be sure not to go unpunished even in this Life But this is not all we find in Sacred Scripture God inflicting on these sins not ordinary punishments but such fearful Judgments to which none other can be compared The drowning of the whole World about a Thousand Years after its Creation when all Flesh excepting some very few Persons had corrupted their ways was it not to wash away its pollution from these sins with a Flood And how many thousand Souls better than our selves perished in that Deluge The dreadful Raining of Fire and Brimstone from Heaven upon those miserable brutish Cities Sodom and Gomorrha and the Cities about them which yet perhaps were not so bad as some Cities even now-a-days amongst us was it not to purifie their Land which was once a Paradise upon Earth from those loathsome sins by Fire The
revenge of our selves according to the Example of St. Paul's Penitent amongst the Corinthians we shall by such fifting our Consciences be the better able to sever the Wheat from the Chaff and know also what is fittest to offer to Almighty God what to pray for and what also to meditate upon In which particular Examen of our Consciences wherein we are to endeavour to produce Acts of Contrition Self-confusion Humility Resolutions of amendment Resignation c. we must observe to what Vice we are most inclined and be sure to bend all our Forces against it for that Captain-Imperfection being Conquered the rest will easily submit And in the next Examen we must Impartially enquire whether our relapses in that kind are as frequent as formerly and so continue on the Fight with new Fervour Vigour and Constancy till it shall please God to give us the Victory Now the difference between Meditation and Contemplation is said by holy Men to be as follows 1. We Meditate when by the help of the Vnderstanding we seek and cast about and at length fix our thoughts upon such Truths and Reasons as are in our present Circumstances most apt to move and affectionate the Will to the embracing the Love of God Christian Vertues Works of Piety c. but sometimes the Inclinations of the Will the Holy Spirit operating more principally in that by Love than in the Vnderstanding by Illumination preceed the Acts of the Vnderstanding tho' most commonly it is the other way the Will and Passions not easily moving without the Reasoning of the Vnderstanding to excite them 2. We Contemplate when we steadfastly and unmovably behold God by Faith believing that he is really with us and within us as he truly is and so leaving all other Objects Idea's and Discourses we Internally look on him as present love him in silence and feed on his All-satiating Sweetness And this Contemplation is either by the help of Sensible Idea's or Intelligible or surmounts them both which is the highest sort of Prayer But this is not my business at present I intending only some short Meditations such as the Reader may easily carry about with him even in his Memory CHAP. II. Of the Subject of Meditation with Heads for the first Week THE Matter and Subject of Meditation may be any thing whatsoever Divinely revealed or that any way conduceth to our Salvation But most commonly it is adapted to the Three Degrees of Christians the lower the middle and the highest Some Learned Men recommend the method of the Church in her Liturgies beginning with Advent Nativity of our Saviour and so on to his Preaching Passion Resurrection Ascension sending the Holy Spirit taking in the Epistles and Gospels of all the Dominica's and Holy-Days This Rule is Chiefly observed by the Clergy Others advise the Selecting some certain number of pious Subjects for every day in the Week and keeping to them only and this seems also a very useful way of Meditation Heads of Meditation for the first Week Monday Of the Chief end of Man Consider 1. Why he was Created namely to praise and glorifie God 2 How far this is observed or transgressed by us and how far the ample means offorded thereunto abused Reflexion 1. Give God Thanks 2. Ask Pardon 3. Promise Amendment in every particular as need requires Tuesday Of God's Benefits Consider our Being from God Preservation Redemption Sanctification Spiritual Gifts and Graces the Holy Sacraments Eternal Life c. All that God gives is freely out of his own Goodness not for his own but our profit Reflex 1. Give great Thanks with all possible Humility 2. Offer up your self all your Thoughts Words Actions and Affections to God to be sincerely directed to his Glory only Wednesday Of your Sins Consider 1. Who it is you have offended viz. God most Munificent who hath done so many and so great things for you and promised more and greater 2. God Omniscient who sees all things most clearly 3. God Omnipotent who can destroy you in a moment and none is able to resist him 4. God most Pure who abhors all sin and for that Reason threw the fallen Angels out of Heaven for one single Sin Adam out of Paradise and condemned him to above 900 Years Pennance for one single disobedience Reflect What then will become of Impenitent Sinners And how great Reason to Fear and Tremble at so great Power and Justice of God! Consider 2. Who thou art that offend'st and resistest so great a God A most vile inconsiderable Worm The whole World in God's sight is but as a drop of the morning dew Sapient 11. What is man then so minute a Particle of that Drop Who is indeed nothing of himself and compared to Infinity bears no Proportion Reflect How great the Clemency of God in bearing so long with so great Sinners and your self the Chief and very greatest of all Consider 3. For what Cause you offended God For some very vile thing some vain Honour some beastly pleasure and that knowingly and wilfully not out of Ignorance or Infirmity Reflect Detest thy Foolishness before God Acknowledge thy Fault Beg mercy Thursday Of Death Consider 1. The certainty of it and the uncertainty of the time Recollect all the suddain Deaths you have ever seen heard or read of and conclude it the greatest madness and folly in the World to live on in such a State in which you would not die Reflect You can die but once and if not well your loss is irreparable Consider 2. Of what things Death deprives you Of all External things Riches Pleasures Honours Friends for which and whose sake you have so often offended God And that nothing will accompany you to the other World but your works whether good or bad Reflect Imagine what a wicked man restored to Life from Hell-fire would do and that do you Consider 3. The State of your Body and Soul Your Body for which you have been so Sollicitous will be carryed out to be meat for the Worms your Soul immediately hurri'd to Judgment by the Angels and from thence by an unknown way to an eternal State either of bless or misery according to the Actions done in the Flesh Reflect Use now all possible means by your self and others to make Christ who is to be your Judge become propitious to you And pray to God for Grace that you may now both know and do what upon your Death-bed and at the Judgment Seat you will wish you had done Friday Of the last Judgment Consider 1. The particular Judgment that passeth upon every man at his Death and remains unalterable 2. The dreadfulness of the last general day when the Heavens will be rouled together as a Scrol the Sun it self darkened the Moon not give her light the Stars fall from their Orbs the Earth quake the Mountains and Islands remove out of their places and Mens hearts fail them for fear 3. An Universal appearance of all the Sons of Adam